The Perfect Art of Deception
by Screaming Ferret
Summary: Darth Sidious muses on the blindness of those around him. Where is the fun if nobody realises? ROTS references.


Disclaimer: The great and thoroughly entertaining Darth Sidious belongs to George Lucas, as does everything else mentioned in this little fic. No copyright infringement is intended.

The Perfect Art of Deception 

It was going splendidly. He could say with all confidence that at this vital stage in the game there was a place for everything, and everything was in its place.

The Master smiled faintly as he watched the great battle, the largest the skies of Coruscant had seen for millennia. He viewed the boiling mass of ships, energy bolts and lurid explosions with all the mild interest of one watching a report on the weather.

It was all so _easy_, really. Disappointingly so, sometimes. A little nudge here and there was all it took, in truth. And once the pebbles were rolling down the mountain, the landslide would only get larger. The tears had helped, oh yes, and the creaking sincerity in his voice as he'd accepted those Emergency Powers. But that performance, in truth, had been designed to needle them all, just a little. A small vanity on his part, really. Did they really believe that anyone could be _that_ saintly? Apparently so.

Darth Sidious's thin lips compressed themselves in a decidedly unpleasant smirk. There was satisfaction in having cloaked himself so well from the Jedi and the good little Republicans that they could never find him if they looked under every rock in the whole damn Galaxy unless he willed it. Nor could they then winkle him out, not without unravelling the very fabric of that great, crumbling, corrupt institution that they served, and that served him in turn. Absolutely the funniest part about it was that they'd never think to look so close to home for him anyway, not after he'd had Dooku tell the upstanding Master Kenobi 'the truth'. Or a version of it, anyway. They knew Dooku was a Sith, and thus he could tell the grand and noble Jedi Council that the sky was blue, and they'd send a commission outside to check. Yes, they knew he was 'somewhere', influencing the Senate and the Chancellor 'somehow', but… At least they'd finally learned his name. And thus the great game continued.

The poor fools didn't even realise that it was already over and that he held all the pieces. Well, almost all.

Yes, there was satisfaction in unpicking the weave from the shadows. But, by the Force, he wanted to see comprehension dawn on their faces. He wanted them to see and, more importantly, _understand_ the reasons for their downfall. He deserved a taste of their fear and helplessness, didn't he? After all these years of waiting, and his Order's long centuries of oppression he deserved that at least. What goes around comes around, after all.

He also wanted Master Yoda to beg on his knees for his very life, but that was merely the frosting on a very large cake indeed.

Yes, the whole thing would become that much more entertaining when the Jedi finally caught up with the plot. However, he currently had a horrible suspicion that they were watching an entirely different performance.

And speaking of tardy Jedi… His rescuers arrived then with all the calm arrogance of their kind. The Sith Lord could feel the tension radiating from them both, but it didn't show in their body language at all. Well, well, he mused. What masks we do wear. With Dooku's subsequent arrival, the show proceeded apace and concluded very much as he had foreseen. It did make life so much easier when events did not protest the forms he intended them to take. Sith Lords are our speciality _indeed_…

In the end, it had all come down to Skywalker. The boy's emotions and power burned him so fiercely that fire seemed to burst through his very skin, surrounding his form and blurring his features in a glowing nimbus of radiant energy so vibrant and raw that it almost hurt to taste. And taste it he did, while Kenobi lay unconscious and Skywalker was busy with his erstwhile apprentice. He _savoured_ the burn. It was poison, and Skywalker all unknowing infected the very heart of the Order that he served. The boy was almost insubstantial within his power, a transient being so fragile that one could break him if one so much as reached out and touched him.

Darth Sidious smiled reassuringly as those trusting, anxious blue eyes sought his, and he rubbed his freed wrists vigorously to restore the circulation. Yes. Everything was just so. And in the end, it would all come down to Skywalker, that bright, broken child before him.

He permitted himself the luxury of smugness as his rescuer continued the tedious and rather redundant process of rescuing. It was all going as planned. Soon, very soon they would all understand just how _perfectly_ he had wrought it.


End file.
